Sunday Morning - Poem by Wallace Stevens

1

Complacencies of the peignoir, and lateCoffee and oranges in a sunny chair,And the green freedom of a cockatooUpon a rug mingle to dissipateThe holy hush of ancient sacrifice.She dreams a little, and she feels the darkEncroachment of that old catastrophe,As a calm darkens among water-lights.The pungent oranges and bright, green wingsSeem things in some procession of the dead,Winding across wide water, without sound.The day is like wide water, without sound,Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feetOver the seas, to silent Palestine,Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

2

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?What is divinity if it can comeOnly in silent shadows and in dreams?Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or elseIn any balm or beauty of the earth,Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?Divinity must live within herself:Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;Grievings in loneliness, or unsubduedElations when the forest blooms; gustyEmotions on wet roads on autumn nights;All pleasures and all pains, rememberingThe bough of summer and the winter branch.These are the measure destined for her soul.

3

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.No mother suckled him, no sweet land gaveLarge-mannered motions to his mythy mind.He moved among us, as a muttering king,Magnificent, would move among his hinds,Until our blood, commingling, virginal,With heaven, brought such requital to desireThe very hinds discerned it, in a star.Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to beThe blood of paradise? And shall the earthSeem all of paradise that we shall know?The sky will be much friendlier then than now,A part of labor and a part of pain,And next in glory to enduring love,Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

4

She says, 'I am content when wakened birds,Before they fly, test the reality Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;But when the birds are gone, and their warm fieldsReturn no more, where, then, is paradise?'There is not any haunt of prophecy,Nor any old chimera of the grave,Neither the golden underground, nor isleMelodious, where spirits gat them home,Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palmRemote on heaven's hill, that has enduredAs April's green endures; or will endureLike her remembrance of awakened birds,Or her desire for June and evening, tippedBy the consummation of the swallow's wings.

5

She says, 'But in contentment I still feelThe need of some imperishable bliss.'Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreamsAnd our desires. Although she strews the leavesOf sure obliteration on our paths,The path sick sorrow took, the many pathsWhere triumph rang its brassy phrase, or loveWhispered a little out of tenderness,She makes the willow shiver in the sunFor maidens who were wont to sit and gazeUpon the grass, relinquished to their feet.She causes boys to pile new plums and pearsOn disregarded plate. The maidens tasteAnd stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

6

Is there no change of death in paradise?Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughsHang always heavy in that perfect sky,Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,With rivers like our own that seek for seasThey never find, the same receding shoresThat never touch with inarticulate pang?Why set pear upon those river-banksOr spice the shores with odors of the plum?Alas, that they should wear our colors there,The silken weavings of our afternoons,And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,Within whose burning bosom we deviseOur earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

7

Supple and turbulent, a ring of menShall chant in orgy on a summer mornTheir boisterous devotion to the sun,Not as a god, but as a god might be,Naked among them, like a savage source.Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,Out of their blood, returning to the sky;And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,The windy lake wherein their lord delights,The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,That choir among themselves long afterward.They shall know well the heavenly fellowshipOf men that perish and of summer morn.And whence they came and whither they shall goThe dew upon their feet shall manifest.

8

She hears, upon that water without sound,A voice that cries, 'The tomb in PalestineIs not the porch of spirits lingering.It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.'We live in an old chaos of the sun,Or old dependency of day and night,Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,Of that wide water, inescapable.Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quailWhistle about us their spontaneous cries;Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;And, in the isolation of the sky,At evening, casual flocks of pigeons makeAmbiguous undulations as they sink,Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Comments about Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

When I read this poem in a Contemporary American poetry class in 1968 the last line in our text read
But the tip that tips the tree still stands, a phallic reference to how the woman in the poem was a trophy
wife - what happened to that line in my college text- you boys cleaned it up or what?(Report)Reply

This poem`s size is in the category of semi-long, but it is worth to go through it two or three times to get a as much as one can. The diction is quite poetic and the combinations of phrases do not sound simplistic.There is much depth in them.

I can not say that I got all that this try has to offer in my three reading of it. This is the kind of poem that you read, put it away, and come back to it a few days later and you see things that you did not see before.

Imagine quotation marks around (The Green Cockatoo) and (the main characters in the Poem are Mary and Jesus) in my previous comment; the site software seems to dislike double quote characters.(Report)Reply

The Green Cockatoo is the name of a play written around 1899 by Arthur Schnitzler, about the French Revolution: http: //www.archive.org/details/3486621 (in translation) . Coincidence? It's an interesting play and I wouldn't be at all surprised at Stevens referencing it in this particular poem (whatever else the green cockatoo refers to) .

Daithi, I quite disagree that the main characters in the Poem are Mary and Jesus; Jesus is referenced rather indirectly and Mary not at all. It's an atheist poem for sure - verse 6 is about the implausibility of an eternal heaven, for example. But if religious folks like the poem as well, s'all good: -)(Report)Reply

Maureen, you do realise that the main characters in the Poem are Mary and Jesus? Also Wallace Stevens is said to have converted to Catholicism before he died.That said, it is a teasing poem and a beaut.It is a wonderful meditation on the worth of sensuality while there is the divine.The pondering Lady who has divinity living inside herself, who feels god in a silent shadow and in dreams.This is a masterpiece of reflection on the Incarnation for my money(Report)Reply

Mr. Capozzoli: Damn, you're right! Cockatoos aren't green, they're either white, black or peach. Thank you! After reading your comment I went back to the text. When I did, my initial reaction was that 'green' modified 'freedom, ' and not 'cockatoo.' (And frankly, green seems like an apt color for freedom.) But a few lines down, Stevens talks about 'green wings.' So either he's talking about a parrot (not a cockatoo) , or this living, green cockatoo is some kind of weird, perverse mutant bird, or it is a design on the rug. I stand corrected and support the last of these three possibilities.

So what's 'free' about a design on a rug? Again, I don't pretend to have the final answer here, but it could be that our imaginations are free to create a green cockatoo...something nature hasn't done.

A very great poem indeed. The language is worthy of Shakespeare at his best. What are we to make of 'the green freedom of a cockatoo/upon a rug...? ' I don't believe there are any green cockatoos in nature. There may be rugs with green cockatoos embroidered onto them. I have also seen cockatoo excrement that is greenish in color, and I can imagine that some of this greenish excrement might be deposited 'upon a rug, ' especially if the cockatoo were allowed 'freedom' from its cage.(Report)Reply

Well, yes. This is certainly a great and enduring poem. But what makes it great? What causes it to endure? I don't pretend to have the Final Truth here, but let me offer the following as a starting point for further discussion.

IMHO, this particular poem has (at least) three great characteristics: it uses language and imagery carefully to create what I'll call 'density' (i.e., the words and images are packed with meaning): it deals with an important subject (the relationship between God and humankind): and it evokes a panoply of responses, whether intellectually or emotionally. (This last characteristic could be a result of the first-the fact that the words and images are packed with meaning.)

I particularly like to see the point at which this poem starts, where it ends, and how it gets there. It starts on a Sunday morning in room that appears well-appointed, perhaps even opulent. A woman lounges in a peignoir (not a house coat) as her cockatoo wanders across the rug, presumably out of its cage. The 'holy hush of ancient sacrifice' is dissipated by sensuality-the complacencies that surround her. The poem ends with a voice that cries (in the wilderness?) a message concerning 'the tomb in Palestine, ' while 'casual flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations.'

On the way from Point A to Point B, almost every line brings a new and powerful image. The first thing I noticed was the birds. Wild birds, birds kept as exotic pets, evoking but not mentioning the concept of Holy Spirit as dove?

The woman questions the nature of divinity. Can God live among us? (Jove? Jesus? The woman's 'dreaming feet' walk across 'wide water.' Does she aspire to divinity?) Can eternal heaven be changeless and still be filled with beauty? (Note here that 'April's green endures.' So while the beauty of an eternal, changeless heaven is questioned, temporal beauty 'endures.')

And in this context, there is a line that Stevens finds important enough to repeat: Death is the mother of beauty.

In the end, 'The tomb in Palestine is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.' If death is the mother of beauty, then what are we to conclude about Jesus' death? Do these lines affirm his resurrection? (Perhaps.) Do they question his divinity? (Again, perhaps.) And what are we to think of this in the context of a natural, chaotic, and quite beautiful world?

I don't believe that Stevens is being ambiguous here. But he certainly is tackling or confronting ambiguity. In the end, perhaps the 'ambiguous undulations' are our own, as we sink downward to darkness on extended wings.(Report)Reply